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I!E\'. THKODOliE PARKP:R. 



HKFOliK THE 



Heto Uorh oMtu Iiiti-Slaljtnj Societii, 



FIIIST ANXlVERSAin' 



lli:i.l) AT THE 



i; ROADWAY T A BE UN AC 

May 12, 1854, 



N E AV Y () R K : 
AAIEUICAX AXTI-SEAYERY SOCIETY. 

14-.' NASSAl" STREfcT. 

185-!-. 



^>v^," 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BY THE 



REV. THEODORE PARKER, 



BEFORE THE 



Hcto toiii Cits giiti-SIabtta S0rietg, 



FIRST ANNIVERSARY, 

HELD AT THE 

ROADWAY TABEKNACLE, 

May 12, 1854. 



NEW YORK: 
AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, 

U-2 NASSAU STREET. 

1854. 



e: 



^'f>*^ 



ADDRESS. 



Ladies and Gentlemen : I shall ask your attention, 
this evening, to some few thoughts on the present con- 
dition of the United States in reepect to Slavery. After 
all that has been said by wise, powerful and eloquent 
men, in this city, this weeij, perhaps I shall have scarce 
anything to present that is new. 

As you look on the general aspect of America to-day, 
its main features are not less than sublime, while they 
are likwise beautiful exceedingly. The full breadth of 
the continent is ours, from sea to sea, from the great 
lakes to the great gulf. There are three million square 
miles, with every variety of climate, and soil, and 
mineral ; great rivers, a static force, inclined planes 
for travel reaching from New Orleans to the Falls of 
St. Anthony, from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to 
Chicago ; smaller rivers, a dynamic force, turning the 
many thousand mills of the industrious North. There 
is a coast most richly indented, to aid the spread of 
civilization. The United States has more than twelve 
thousand miles of shore line on the continent ; more 
than nine thousand on its islands ; more than twenty- 
four thousand miles of river navigation. Here is the 
Material Groundwork for a great State— not an empire, 
but a Commonwealth. The world has not such another. 

There are twenty-four millions of men ; fifteen and a 
half millions with Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins— 



strong, real Anglo-Saxon blood ; eight millions and a 
half more of other families and races, just enough to 
temper the Anglo-Saxon blood, to furnish a new com- 
posite tribe, far better, I trust, than the old. What a 
Human Basis for a State to be erected on this material 
groundwork ! 

On the Eastern Slopes of the continent, where the 
high lands which reach from the Katahdin mountains 
in Maine to the end of the Apalachians in Georgia— on 
the Atlantic slopes, where the land pitches down to the 
sea from the 48th to the 28th parallel, there are fifteen 
States, a million square miles, communicating with the 
ocean. In the South, rivers bear to the sea rice, cotton, 
tobacco, and the products of half-tropic agriculture ; 
in the North, smaller streams toil all day, and some- 
times all night, working wood, iron, cotton and wool 
into forms of use and beauty, while iron roads carry 
to the sea the productions of temperate agriculture, 
mining and manufactures. 

On the Western Slope, where the rivers flow down to 
the Pacific Ocean from the 49th to the 32d parallel, is 
a great country, almost eight hundred thousand square 
miles in extent. There, too, the Anglo-Saxon has 
gone ; in the south, the gold-hunter gathers the pre- 
cious metals, while the farmer, the miner and the 
woodman gather far more precious products in the 
north. 

In the Great Basin between the Cordilleras of the 
West and the Alleghanies, where the Mississippi drains 
half the continent to the Mediterranean of the New 
World, there also the Anglo-Saxon has occupied the 
ground— twelve hundred thousand square miles ; in 
the south to rear cotton, rice and sugar ; in the north 
to raise cattle and cereal grasses, for beast and for man- 



5 



What a spectacle it is ! A nation not eighty years 
old, and still in its cradle, and yet grown so great. 
Two hundred and fifty years ago, there was not an 
Anglo-Saxon on all this continent. Now there is an 
Anglo - Saxon commonwealth twenty - four millions 
strong. Rich as it is in numbers, there are not yet 
eight men to the square mile. 

All this is a Republic ; it is a democracy. There is 
no born priest to stand betwixt the nation and its God ; 
no Pope to entail his nephews on the Church ; no bishop 
claiming divine right to rule over the people and stand 
betwixt them and the Infinite. There is no king, no 
born king, to ride on the nation's reck. There are 
noble-men, but none Noble-born to usurp the land, to 
monopolize the government and keep the community 
from the bosom of the earth. The people is Priest and 
makes its own religion out of God's revelation in man's 
nature and history. The people is its own King to rule 
itself; its own Noble to occupy the earth. The people 
make the laws and choose their own magistrates. In- 
dustry is free ; travel is free ; religion is free ; speech 
is free ; there are no shackles on the press. The nation 
rests on industry, not on war. It is formed of agri- 
culturists, traders, sailors, miners— not a nation of 
soldiers. The army numbers ten thousand— one soldier 
for every twenty-four thousand men. The people are 
at peace ; no nation invades us. The government is 
firmly fixed and popular. A nation loving liberty, 
loves likewise law ; and when it gets a point of liberty, 
it fences it all round with law as high up as the hands 
reach. We annually welcome four hundred thousand 



immigrants who flee from the despotism of the Old 
World. 

The country is rich— after England, the richest on 
earth in cultivated lands, roads, houses, mills. Four 
million tuns of shipping sail under the American flag. 
This year we shall build half a million tuns more, 
which, at forty dollars a tun, is worth twenty millions 
of dollars. That is the ship crop. Then, the corn crop 
is seven hundred millions of bushels — Indian corD. 
What a harvest of coal, copper, iron, lead, of wheat, 
cotton, sugar, rice, is produced! 

Over all and above all these there rises the great 
American Political Idea, a "self-evident truth"— 
which cannot be proved— it needs no proof; it is ante- 
rior to demonstration ; namely, that every man is en- 
dowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights, 
and in these rights all men are equal ; and on these 
the government is to rest, deriving its sole sanction 
from the governed's consent. 

Higher yet above this material groundwork, this 
human foundation, this accumulation of numbers, of 
riches, of industry— as the cross on the top of a tall, 
wide dome, whose lantern is the great American poli- 
tical idea— as the cross that surmounts it rises the 
American Religious Idea — one God ; Christianity the 
true religion ; and the worship of God by Love; in- 
wardly it is Piety, love to God ; outwardly love to man 
— morality, benevolence, philanthropy. 

What a spectacle to the eyes of the Scandinavian, the 
German, the Dutchman, the Irishman, as they view 
America from afar! What a contrast it seems to 
Europe. There liberty is ideal ; it is a dream ; here it 
is organic, an institution ; one of the Establishments of 
the land. 



That, ladies and gentlemen, is the aspect which 
America presents to the oppressed victims of European 
despotism in Church and in State. Far oflf on the other 
side of the Atlantic, among the Appenines, on the plains 
of Germany, and in the Slavonian lands, I have me* 
men to whom America seemed as this fair-proportioned 
edifice that I have thus sketched out before your eyes. 
But when they come nearer, behold half the land is 
black with Slavery. In 1850, out of more than two 
hundred and forty hundred thousand Americans 
(24,000,000), thirty-two hundred thousand (3,200,000) 
were slaves — more than an eighth of the population 
counted as cattle; not as citizens at all. They are 
only human material, not yet wrought into citizens — 
nay, not counted human: They are cattle, property; 
not counted men, but animals and no more. Manhood 
must not be extended to them. Listen while I read to 
you from a Southern print. It was recommended by 
the Governor of Alabama that the Legislature should 
pass a law prohibiting the separation of families ; 
whereupon the Richmond Enquirer discourses thus : 

" This recommendation strikes us as being most un- 
wise and impolitic. If slaves are property, theii should 
they he at the absolute disposal of the master , or be 
subject only to such legal provisions as are designed 
for the protection of life and limb. If the relation of 
master and slave be infringed for one purpose, it would 
be difficult to fix any limit to the encroachment." 

They are property, no more, and must be treated as 
such, and not as men. 

Slavery is on the Atlantic slopes of the continent. 
There are one million six hundred thousand (1,600,000) 
slaves between the Alleghany range and the Atlantic 
coast. Slavery is in the central basin. There are a 



8 

million and a half of slaves on the land drained by the 
Mississippi. Spite of law and constitution, Slavery 
has gone to the Pacific slopes, travelling with the gold- 
hunter into California. The State whose capital county 
"in three years committed over twelve hundred mur- 
ders " has very appropriately legalized Slavery for a 
limited time. I suppose it is only preliminary to legal- 
izing it for a time limited only by the Eternal God. 
In the very capital of the Christian Democracy there 
are four thousand purchased men. In the Senate- 
house, a few years ago, a Mississippi Senator belched 
out his imprecations against that one JVew Harnpshu'e 
Senator who has never yet been found false to humanity 
(applause). Mr. Foote was a freeman, a citizen and a 
^'democrat"; and while, in the halls of Congress, he 
was threatening to hang John P. Hale on the tallest 
pine tree in Mississippi, there toiled in a stable, whose 
loft he slept in by night, one of that Senator's own 
brothers. The son of Mr. Foote's father was a slave 
in the capital of the United States, while his half- 
brother— by the father's side— threatened to hang on 
the tallest pine in Mississippi the only Senator that 
New Hampshire sent to Washington who dared be true 
to truth and free for freedom (great applause). 

But a few years ago, Mr. Hope H. Slatter had his 
negro market in the capital of the United States ; one 
of the greatest slave-dealers in America. He was a 
member also, it is said, of a " Christian church." The 
slave-pen is a singular institution for a democratic 
metropolis, and the slave-trader a peculiar ornament 
for the Christian Church in the capital of a democracy. 
He grew rich, went to Baltimore, had a finS house, and 
once entertained a " President of the United States" 



9 

in his mansion. The slave-trader and the democratic 
President met together— Slatter and Polk ! fit guest 
and fitting host ! 

In all the three million square miles of American 
land there is no inch of free soil, from the St. Johns to 
the Rio Gila, from Madawasca to San Diego. The star- 
spangled banner floats from Van Couver's island by 
Nootka Sound to Key West on the south of Florida, 
and all the way the flag of our Union is the standard of 
Slavery. In all the soil that our fathers fought to 
make free from English tyranny, there is not an inch 
where the black man is free, save the five thousand 
miles that Daniel Webster surrendered to Lord Ash- 
burton by the treaty of 1842 (great applause and 
langhter). The symbol of the Union is a fetter. The 
President should be sworn on the auction-block of a 
slave-trader. The New Hampshire President, in his 
Inaugural, declared, publicly, his allegiance to the 
slave power — not to the power of northern mechanics, 
free farmers, free manufacturers, free men ; but alle- 
giance to the slave power ; he swears special protection 
to no property but " property " in slaves ; specific alle- 
giance to no law but the Fugitive Slave bill ; devotion 
to no right but the slaveholder's " right" to his pro- 
perty in man. 

The Supreme Court of the United States is a slave 
court ; a majority of the Senate and of the House of 
Representatives the same. It has been so this forty 
years. The majority of the House of Representatives 
are obedient to the lords of the lash; a majority of 
Northern politicians, especially of that denomination 
which is called " dough-faces," are only overseers for 
the owner of the slave. Mr. Douglas is a great over- 



10 

?eer ; Mr. Everett is a little overseer, very little (great 
laughter). 

The nation oflfjrs a homestead out of its public land ; 
it is only to the white man. What would you say if 
the Emperor of Russia offered land only to nobles ; the 
Pope on\ J to priests ; Queen Victoria only to lords? 
Each male settler in Utah, it seems, is to have four 
hiindred and eighty acres of land if he is not married, 
and a hundred and sixty more, I believe, according 
to one proposition, for every wife that he has got 
(laughter). But if he has the complexion of the only 
children that Madison left behind him, he can have no 
land at all (applause and a few hisses). 

Even a Boston school house is shut against the black 
man's children. The arm of the city government slams 
the door in every coloured boy's face. His father helps 
pay for the public school ; the son and daughter must 
not come in. 

In the slave States, it is a crime to teach the slave to 
read and write. Out of four millions of children of 
America at school in 1850, there were twenty -six 
thousand that were coloured. There were more than 
four hundred thousand free coloured persons, and there 
were more than two hundred and fourteen thousand 
thereof under the age of twenty ; of these, there were 
at school only twenty-six thousand — one child in nine ! 
Out of three and a quarter millions of slaves, there luas 
not one at school. It is a crime by the statute in every 
slave State to teach a slave to spell " God." He may 
be a Christian ; he must not write " Christ." He must 
worship the Bible ; he must not read it ! It is a crime 
even in a Sunday school to teach a child the great let- 
ters which spell out " Holy Bible." I knew a minister. 



11 



he was a Connecticut man, too, who went off from New 
Orleans because he did not dare to stay ; and he did 
not dare to stay because he tried to teach the slave to 
read in his Sunday school. He went back to Connec- 
ticut, whence he will, perhaps, go as missionary to 
China or Turkey, and find none to hinder his Christian 
work. 

At the North, the black man is shut out of the meet- 
ing house. In Heaven, according to the theology of 
America, he may sit down with the just made perfect, 
his sins washed white " in the blood of the Lamb " ; but 
when he comes to a certain Baptist church in Boston, 
he cannot own a pew. And there are few churches 
where he can sit in a pew. The rich and the poor are 
there; the one Lord is the maker of them all ; but the 
Church thinks He did not make the black as well as the 
white. Nay ; he is turned out of the omnibus, out of 
the burial ground. There is a burial ground in this 
State, and in the deed that confers the land it is stipu- 
lated that no coloured person or convict can ever be 
buried there. He is turned out of the graveyard, 
where the great mother of our bodies gathers our dust 
when the sods of the valley are sweet to the soul 
(applause). Nowhere but in the jail and on the gallows 
has the black man equal rights with the white in our 
American legislation ! 

The American Press— it is generally the foe of the 
slave, the advocate of bondage. 

In Virginia, it is felony to deny the master's right to 
own his slave. There is an old law, re-enacted Tn the 
revision of the Virginia statute, which inflicts a punish- 
ment of not more than one year's confinement on any 
one guilty of that offence. It was proposed in the Vir- 



12 



ginia Legislature, last winter, that if a man had con- 
scientious objections to holding slaves, he should not 
be allowed to sit on any jury where the matter of a 
man's freedom was in question. Nor is that all. There 
is a law in Virginia, it is said, that when a man has 
three-quarters white blood in his veins, he may recover 
his freedom in virtue of that fact. It is well known 
that at least half the slaves in Virginia are half white 
and one-quarter of them three-quarters white. Accord- 
ingly, it was proposed in one of their newspapers that 
that old law should be repealed, and another substi- 
tuted providing that no man should recover his freedom 
in consequence of his complexion, unless he had more 
than nine-tenths white blood in his veins. 

The slave has no rights ; the ideas of the Decla- 
tion of Independence are repudiated ; be is not " en- 
dowed by his Creator " with " certain inalienable 
rights " to " life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'* 
Accomplished Mr. Agassiz comes all the way from Swit- 
zerland to teach us the science which God has scored 
up in the ground under our feet-the perennial Old 
Testament— or in the frames of our bodies, this living 
New Testament of Almighty God in man ; and he tells 
us this: " The Mandingo and the Guinea negro" 
together " do not differ more from the Orang Outang 
th^'an the Malay or white man differs from the negro^ 
So, according to Mr. Agassiz, the negro is a sort of 
arithmetic mean proportional between a man and a 
monkey. The upright form, the power of speech, the 
religious faculty, permanence of affection, self-denial, 
power to master the earth, and smelt iron oar, as the 
African has done, and is doing still, every year, do not 
distinguish the black man from the Orang Outang. 



13 

" 0, star-eyed science ! hast thou wandered there, 
To waft us home the message of despair.'' 

Mr. Agassiz is an able man, of large genius, industry 
that never surrenders, and was a bold champion of 
freedom on his own Swiss hills. He comes to America ; 
he is subdued to the temper of our atmosphere, and, 
from a great man of science, he becomes the Swiss of 
Slavery. Southern journals rejoice at the confirmation 
of their opinion. Listen to what a Southern editor 
says. I am quoting now from one of the most powerful 
Southern journals, printed at the capital of Virginia, the 
Bichmond Examiner, and the words which I read were 
written by the American Charge d' Affairs at Turin. 
He says : " The foundation and right of negro-Slavery 
is in its utility and the fitness of things ; it is the same 
right by which we hold property in domestic animals." 
The negro is " the connecting linkbetween the human 
and brute creation." " The negro is not the white 
man. Not with more safety do we assert that a horse is 
not a hog. Hay is good for horses— but not for hogs ; 
liberty is good for white men, but not for negroes'^ 
" A law rendering perpetual the relation between a 
negro and his master is no wrong, but a right." 

Then, in reply to some writer in the Tribune, who 
had asked, " Have they no souls," he says, " They may 
have souls, for aught he knew to the contrary ; so may 
horses and hogs " (laughter). Then, when somebody 
quotes the Bible in behalf of the rights of men, he 
answers : " The Bible has been vouchsafed to mankind 
for the purpose of keeping us out of hell -fire and get- 
ting us into heaven 6y ^Ae mysteries of faith and the 
inner life ; not to teach us a government political 
economy," &c. 
2 



14 

The American Church repudiates the Christian reli- 
gion when it comes to speak about the African. It 
does not apply the golden rule to the slave. The " ser- 
vants " of the New Testament, in the slave language, 
were " slaves," and the American Church commands 
them to be obedient to their masters. There must be 
no marriage — the affectional and passional union of 
one man and one woman for life — only transient con- 
cubinage. Marriage is inconsistent with Slavery, and 
the slave wedlock in the American Church is not a Sa- 
crament. " Manifest destiny " is the cry of politicians 
and that demands Slavery : " The will of God " is the cry 
of the priests, and it demands the same thing. I am 
not speaking of ministers of Christianity ; they are 
very different sort of men and preach a very different 
creed from that — only of the Ministers in the Churches 
of Commerce. According to the popular theology of all 
Christendom, Jesus Christ came on earth to seek and 
to save that which is lost. The Good Physician does 
not go among the whole, but among the sick. If he 
were to come here to seek to relieve the slave, the lead- 
ing men in the American denominations would tell 
him he came before he was called ; he ran before he 
was sent— that it was no mission from God to break a 
single American fetter, nor to let the oppressed go free. 
Is not the " Constitution " above " Conscience," and the 
Fugitive Slave bill more holy than the Bible ; the com- 
missioner of more authority than Christ ? 

" Oh, Faith of Christians, hast thou wandered there 
To waft us home the message of despair, 
Then bind the palm thy sages brctv to suit 
Of blasted leaf and death-distilling fruit. ^' 
Such is the aspect of America when the immigrant 
comes near and looka the nation in the face. What a 



15 

spectacle that is to put along side of the other ! Europe 
repudiates bondage— Scandanavia, Holland, France, 
England. Since Britain emancipated her slaves, the 
present Emperor of Russia has set free over seven mil- 
lion of slaves that belonged to his own private domain 
(applause), and established more than four thousand 
schools, free for those seven millions of emancipated 
slaves ; and did he not fear an out break in a country 
where " revolution is endemic," he would set free the 
other five and thirty millions that occupy his soil to- 
day. And when he extends his territory, he never ex- 
tends the area of bondage, only the area of what in 
Russia is freedom, 

What a spectacle ! A country reaching from sea to 
sea, from the Gulf of tropic heat to Lake Superior's 
arctic cold, and not an inch of free soil all the way ! 
Three millions of square miles, and not a foot where a 
fugitive from Slavery can be safe ! A democracy, and 
every eighth man bought and sold ! 

It is the richest nation in the world, after England ; 
yet, we are so poor that every eighth man is unable 
to say that he owns the smallest finger on his feeblest 
hand. So poor are we amid our riches, that every eighth 
woman is to such an extent a pauper that she does not 
own the baby she has borne into the world, nor even 
the baby that she bears under her bosom ! Maternity 
is put up at public vendue, and the auctioneer says, 
*' So much for the mother and so much for the hopes 
and expectations of another life that is to be born ! " 

America calls herself " the best educated nation in 
the world," and yet, in fifteen Democratic States, it is 
a felony by statute to teach a child to know the three 
letters that spell «' God." What a spectacle is that ! 



16 

Nor is that all ; but able men, well-educated and 
well-endowed, come forward to teach us that Slavery 
is not only no evil, but is right as a principle, and is 
divine-is a part of the divine revelation which the 
great God miraculously made to man. What a spec- 
tacle ! 

Four hundred thousand immigrants come here openly 
every year, and a thousand fugitives flee off by- night, 
escaping from American despotism. They go by the 
Underground Railroad, shut up in boxes smaller than 
a coffin, or, as lately happened, riding through the 
storms of Ocean in the fore-chains of a packet ship, 
wet by every dash of the sea, and frozen by the winter's 
wind. Far off in the South the spirit of freedom came 
in the Northern blast to the poor man, and said to him, 
" It is better to enter into freedom halt and maimed 
rather than, having two hands and two feet, to continue 
in bondage forever ;" and he puts himself in the fore- 
chains of a packet ship, and, half frozen, with the loss 
of two of his limbs, he gets to the North, and thanks 
God that he has got one hand and one foot to enter into 
freedom with (applause). jAlas, he is carried back, 
halt and maimed, to die ; then he goes from bondage to 
that other Commonwealth, where even the American 
slave is free from his master, and Democrats " cease 
from troubling." 

America translates the Bible-I am glad of it. and 
would give my mite thereto— into a hundred and forty- 
seven different tongues, and sends missionaries all over 
the world ; and here at home are three and a quarter 
millions of American men who have no Bible, whose 
only missionary is the overseer. 
In the Hall of Independence, Judge Kane and Judge 



17 

Grier hold their court. Two great official kidnappers 
of the middle States hold their slave-court ia the very 
building where the Declaration of Independence was 
decreed, was signed and thence published to the world. 
What a spectacle it is ! We thought, a little while ago, 
that Judge Jeffries was a historical fiction ; that Scroggs 
was impossible. We did not think such a thing could 
exist. Jeffries is repeated in Philadelphia ; Scroggs is 
brought back to life in various Northern towns. What 
a spectacle is that for the Swiss, the German and the 
Scandinavian who come here ! 

Do these immigrants love American Slavery } The 
German, the Swiss, the Scandinavian hate it. I am 
sorry to say there is one class of men that come here 
who love it ; it is the class most of all sinned against 
at home. When the Irishman comes to America, he 
takes ground against the African. I know there are 
exceptions, and I would go far to honour them ; but 
the Irish, as a body, oppose the emancipation of the 
blacks as a body. Every sect that comes from abroad 
numbers friends of freedom— except the Catholic. 
Those who call themselves infidels from Germany do 
not range on the slaveholder's side. I have known some 
men who take the ghastly and dreadful name of Atheists ; 
but they said " there is a law higher than the slave- 
holder's statute." But do you know a Catholic priest 
that is opposed to Slavery ? I wish I did. There are 
good things in the Catholic faith— the Protestants have 
not wholly outgrown it— not yet. I wish I could hear of 
a single Catholic priest of any eminence who ever cared 
anything for the freedom of the most oppressed men 
that are here in America. I have heard of none (ap- 
plause). 

2* 



18 

Look a little closer. The great interests prized most 
in America are Commerce and Politics. The great 
cities are the head-quarters of these, too. Agriculture 
and the mechanic arts, they are spread abroad all over 
the country. Commerce and politics predominate in 
the cities. New York is the great metropolis of Com- 
merce ; Washington of Politics. What have been the 
views of American commerce in respect to freedom r 
It has been against it, I am sorry to say so. In Europe 
commerce is the ally of freedom, and has been so far 
back that the memory of man runs not to the contrary. 
In America, the great commercial centres, ever since 
the Revolution, have been hostile to freedom. In Mas- 
sachusetts we have a few rich men friendly to freedom 
-they are very few ; the greater part of even Massa- 
chusetts capital goes towards bondage-not towards 
freedom. In general, the great men of commerce are 
hostile to it. They want first money, next money and 
money last of all ; fairly if we can get it-if not, un- 
faily (laughter). Hence, the commercial cities are the 
head-quarters of Slavery ; all the mercantile capitols 
execute the Fugitive Slave bill-Philadelphia, New 
York, Boston, Buffalo, Cincinnati-only small towns 
repudiate man-stealing. The Northern capitalists lend 
money and take slaves as collateral ; they are good 
security ; you can realize on it any day. The Northern 
merchant takes slaves into his ships as merchandise. 
It pays very well. If you take them on a foreign voy- 
acre, it is "piracy"; but taken coastwise, the domes- 
til; slave trade is a legal traffic. In 18-52, a ship called 
the " Edward Everett » made two voyages from Balti- 
more to New Orleans, and each time it carried slaves, 
once 20, once 12 (applause and hisses). 



19 

A sea captain in Massachusetts told a story to a com- 
missioner sent to look after the Indians, which I will 
tell you. He commanded a small brig, which plied be? 
tween Carolina and the Gulf States. " One day, at 
Charleston," said he, " a man came and brought to me 
an old negro slave. He was very old, and had fought 
in the Revolution, and been very distinguished for 
bravery and other soldierly qualities. If he had not 
been a negro, he would have become a Captain at least, 
perhaps a Colonel. But, in his old age, his master found 
no use for him, and said he could not afford to keep him. 
He asked me to take the revolutionary soldier and carry 
him South and sell him. I carried him,'" said the man, 
" to Mobile, and I tried to get as good and kind a master 
for him as I could, for I did 'nt like to sell a man that 
had fought for his country. I sold the old revolution- 
ary soldier for a hundred dollars to a citizen of Mo- 
bile, who raised poultry, and he set him to attend 
a hen coop." I suppose the South Carolina master 
drew the pension till the soldier died. " Why did you 
do such a thing ? " said my friend, who was an Anti- 
Slavery man. " If I did 'nt do it," he replied, " I never 
could get a bale of cotton, nor a box of s\igar, nor any- 
thing to carry from or to any Southern port " (ap- 
plause). 

In Politics, almost all leading men have been servants 
of Slavery. Three "major prophets" of the Ameri- 
can Republic have gone home to render their account, 
where the servant is free from his master and " the 
wicked cease from troubling," and the " weary are at 
rest." Clay, Calhoun, Webster ; they were all prophets 
of Slavery against freedom fapplause and hisses). No 
men of high political standing and influence have ever 



20 



lived in this century who were sunk so deep in the mire 
of Slavery as they during the last twenty years. No 
iDolitical footprints have sunk so deep into the soil- their 
bracks run towards bondage. Where they marched 
Slavery followed. 

Our Presidents must all be pro-slavery men. John 
Quincy Adams even, the only American thus far who 
inherited a great name and left it greater, as President 
did nothing against Slavery that has yet come to light ; 
said nothing against it that has yet come to light. The 
brave old man, in his latter days, stirred up the nobler 
nature that was in him, and amply repaid for the sins 
of omission (applause). But the other Presidents, a 
long line of them-Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison (they 
are growing smaller and smaller), Tyler, Polk, Taylor 
(Who was a brave, earnest man, and had a great deal 
of aood in him-and now they begin to grow very 
rapidly small) (laughter)-Fillmore, Pierce-can you 
find a single breath of freedom in these men ? Not one. 
The last slave President, though his cradle was rocked 
in New Hampshire, is Texan in his latitude. He swears 
allegiance to Slavery in his inaugural address. 

Is there a breath of freedom in the great federal 
officers-secretaries, judges ? Ask the Cabinet ; ask 
the Supreme Court ; the federal officers ; they are, al- 
most without exception, servants of Slavery. Out of 
forty thousand government officers to-day, I think 
thirty-seven thousand are strongly pro-slavery ; and 
of the three thousand who I think are at heart Anti- 
Slavery, we have yet to listen long before we shall hear 
the first Anti-Slavery lisp. I have been listening ever 
since the fourth of March, 1853, and have not heard a 
word yet. In the English Cabinet there are various 



21 

opinions on important matters : in America, they " are 
a unit," a unit of bondage. In Russia, a revolutionary 
man sometimes holds a high post and does great ser- 
vice ; in America, none but the servant of Slavery is 
fit for the political functions of Democracy. I believe, 
in the United States there is not a single editor hold- 
ing a goverment office who says anything against the 
Nebraska bill. They do not dare. Did a Whig office- 
holder oppose the Fugitive Slave bill or its enforcement ? 
I never heard of one. The day of office, like the day 
of bondage, " takes off half a man's manhood," and the 
other half it hides ! A little while ago, an Anti-Slavery 
man in Massachusetts carried a remonstrance against 
the Nebraska bill, signed by almost every voter in his 
town, to the postmaster, and asked him, " Will you 
sign it ? " " No, I shan't," said he. " Why not ?" 
Before he answered, one of his neighbours said, " Well, 
I would not sign it if I was he.' Aj Why not ? " said the 
man. " Because if he did, he^^ffild be turned out of 
office in twenty-four hours ; the next telegraph would 
do the business for him." " Well," said my friend, '« if 
I held an office on that condition, I would get the biggest 
brass dog-collar I could find and put it around my 
neck, and have my owner's name on it, in great, large 
letters, so that every body might see whose dog I was " 
(bursts of laughter). 

In the individual States, I think there is not a single 
Anti-Slavery government. I believe Vermont is the 
only State that has an Anti-Slavery Supreme Court ; 
and that is the only State which has not much concern 
in commerce or manufactures. It is a State of farmers. 

For a long time the American Government has been 
controlled by Slavery. There is an old story told by 



the Hebrew rabbis, that before the flood there was an 
enormous giant, called Gog. After the flood had got 
into full tide of successful experiment, and everybody 
i57as drowned except those taken into the ark, Gog came 
striding along after Noah, feeling his way with a cane 
as long as a mast of the " Great Republic." The 
T^aters had only just come up to his girdle. It was 
then over the hill tops and was still rising-raimng 
night and day. The giant hailed the Patriarch. Noali 
put his head out of the window, and said, "Who is 
there ' " " It is I," said Gog. " Take us in ; it is wet 
outside!" "No," said Noah, "You're too big; no 
room. Besides, you're a bad character. You would be 
a very dangerous passenger, and would make troub e 
in the ark ; I shall not take you ; " and he clapped to 
the window. " Go to thunder," said Gog ; " I will ride 
after all ;" and he strode after him wading, through 
Ihe waters and keep]* out of the deep holes, and 
.nountins on the topmhe ark, with one leg over he 
larboard and the other over the starboard side, steered 
it just as he pleased and made it rough weather inside 
(laughter). Now, in making the Constitution we did 
not care to take in Slavery in express terms. It looked 
ugly. So it got on the top astride, and it steers us jusc 
where it pleases (applause). . ^110 nil 

The Slave Power controls the President, and fills all 
the offices. Out of the twelve elected Presidents, four 
have been from the North, and the last of them might 
iust as well have been taken by lot at the South any- 
where. Mr. Pierce, I just now said, was Texan in his 
latitude. His conscience is Texan ; only hi. cradle was 
New Hampshire. Of the nine Judges of the bupreme 
Court, five are from the slave States-the Chief Justice 



23 

from the slave States. A part of the Cabinet are from 
tiie North— I forget how many ; it makes no difference ; 
they are all of the same Southern complexion ; and the 
man that was taken from the farthest north, Caleb 
Cashing, I think is most southern in his Slavery pro- 
clivities. 

The nation fluctuates in its policy. Now it is for in- 
ternal improvements ; then it is against them. Now it 
is for a bank ; then a bank is unconstitutional. Now 
it is for free trade; then for protection; then for 
free trade again — protection is altogether uncon- 
stitutional. Mr. Calhoun turns clear round. — 
When the North went for free trade and grew rich 
by that, Calhoun did not like it, and wanted pro- 
tection. He thought the South would grow rich by 
it. And when the North grew rich under protection, 
he turned round to free trade again. Now the nation 
is for giving away the public lands. Sixteen millions 
of acres of " swamp lands " are given, within seven 
years, to States. Twenty -five millions of the public 
lands are given away gratuitously to soldiers— six mil- 
lions in a single year. Forty-seven millions of the 
public lands to seventeen States for schools, colleges, 
&c. Forty-seven thousand acres for deaf and dumb 
asylums. And look ; just now it changes its policy and 
Mr. Pierce is opposed to granting any land— it is not 
constitutional— to Miss Dix, to make the insane sober 
and bring them to their right minds. He may have a 
private reason for keeping the people in a state of cra- 
ziness, for aught I know (laughter). 

The public policy changes in these matters. It never 
changes in respect to Slavery. Be the Whigs in power, 
Slavery is Whig ; be the Democrats, it is Democratic 



24 

At first, Slavery was an exceptional meagure, and men 
tried to apologize for it and excuse it. Now it is a 
Normal Principle, and the institution must be defended 
and enlarged. 

Commercial men must be moved, I suppose, by com- 
mercial arguments. Look, then, at this statement of 
facts. 

Slavery is unprofitable for the people. America is 
poorer for Slavery. I am speaking in the great focus of 
American commerce— the third city for population and 
riches in the Christian world. Let me, therefore, talk 
about Dollars. America, I say, is poorer for Slavery. 
If the three and a quarter millions of slaves were free- 
men, how much richer would she be .' There is no State 
in the Union but it is poorer for Slavery. It is a bad 
tool to work with. The educated freemen is the best 
working power in the world. 

Compare the North with the South, and see what a 
diff"erence in riches, comfort, education. See the supe- 
riority of the North. But the South started with every 
advantage of nature— soil, climate, everything. To 
make the case plainer, let me take two great States, 
Virginia and New York. Compare them together. 

In geographical position, Virginia has every ad- 
vantage over New York. Almost everything that will 
grow in the Union will grow somewhere in Virginia, 
save sugar. The largest ships can sail up the Potomac 
a hundred miles, as far as Alexandria. The Rappahan- 
nock, York, James, are all navigable rivers. The 
Ohio flanks Virginia more than three hundred miles. 
There is sixty miles of navigation on the Kanawha. 
New York has a single navigable stream with not a 
hundred and fifty miles of navigation, from Troy to the 



25 

ocean. Virginia has the best harbour on the Atlanti(> 
coast, and several smaller ones. Your State has but a 
single maritime port. Virginia abounds in water- 
power for mills. I stood once on the steps of the Capi- 
tol at Washington and within sis miles of me under my 
eyes there was a water-power greater than that which 
turns the mills of Lawrence, Lowell and Manchester, 
all put together. In 1836, it did not turn a wheel ; 
now, I am told, it drives a grist mill (laughter). No 
State is so rich in water-power. The Alleghanies are 
a great water-shed, and at the eaves the streams rush 
forward as if impatient to turn mills. New York has 
got very little water-power of this sort. Virginia is 
full of minerals — coal, iron, lead, copper, salt. Her 
agricultural resources are immense. What timber 
clothes her mountains ! what a soil for Indian corn, 
wheat, tobacco, rice ! even cotton grows in the southern 
part. Washington said the central counties of Virginia, 
were the best land in the United States. Daniel Web- 
ster, reporting to Virginians of his European tour, said 
he saw no lands in Europe so good as the valley of the^ 
Shenandoah. Virginia is rich in mountain pastures 
favourable to sheep and horned cattle. Nature gives 
Virginia everything that can be asked of nature. What 
a position for agriculture, manufactures, mining, com- 
merce ! Norfolk is a hundred miles nearer Chicago 
than New York is, but she has no intercourse with 
Chicago. It is three hundred miles nearer the mouth of 
the Ohio ; but if a Norfolk man wants to go to St. 
Louis, I believe his quickest way lies through New 
York. It is not a day's sail farther from Liver- 
pool; it is nearer to the Mediterranean and South 
American points. But what is Norfolk, with her 



23,000 tuna of shipping and her fourteen thousand 
population? What is Richmond, with her twenty- 
IL thousand men-ten thousand of tb- slaves 
Nay, what is Virginia itself, the very oldest State. 
Let me cypher out some numerical details. 

In 1790, she had 748,000 inhabitants; now she has 
1491000. She has not doubled in 60 years. In 1/90, 
New York had 340,000 ; now she has 3,048,000. She 
has multiDlied her population almost ten times (ap- 
plause). in Virginia, in 1850, there were only 4o2,000 
Lre freemen than sixty years before; in New lork, 
there were 2,724,000 more freemen than there were in 
1790 There are only 165,000 dwellings in Virginia ; 
463,000 in New York. Then the Virginia farms were 
worth ^•210,000,000; yours, <?554,000,000 ; Virginia is 
wholly agricultural, while you are also -^-^i^^S 
and commercial. Her farm tools were worth ^7 000,000, 
vours ^-22,000,000. Her cattle, ^33, 000,000; yours, 
^3 000>0. The orchard products of Virginia were 
tr'th ^177,000; of New York. ^1,762^00. Virginia 
L 47' miles of railroad ; you ^ad 1, 26 mOes. Sh 
had 74,000 tuns of shipping; you had 942,000. The 
value of her cotton factories was not two millions ; the 
value of yours was four and a quarter millions, bhe 
produced S841.000 worth of woolen goods; you pro- 
duced $7,030,000. Her furnaces produced two millions 
and a half; yours produced eight millions. Her tan- 
neries §-894,000 ; yours, 9,804,000. All of her manufac- 
tures together were not worth $9,000,000 ; those of the 
city of mw York alone have an annual value of 
$105,000,000. Her attendance at school was 109,000 , 
yours, 693,000. . . r • 

But there is one thing in which Virginia is far m 



27 

advance of you. Of native Virginians, over twenty 
years old, who could not read the name of " Christ " nor 
the word " God "—free white people who cannot spell 
r^ewocra^— there were 87,383. That is, out of every 
five hundred .free vhite persons, there were one him- 
dredand five that could not spell Pierce. In New 
York there are 30,670— no more; so that out of five 
hundred persons, there are six that cannot read and 
write. Virginia is advancing rapidly upon you in this 
respect. In 1840 she had only 58,787 adults that could 
not read and write; now 28,596 more. So you see she 
is advancing ! 

Virginia has 87 newspapers ; New York, 428. The 
Virginia newspaper circulation is 89,000 ; New York 
newspaper circulation is 1,622,000. The Tribune -and 
I think it is the best paper there is in the world (loud 
and long applause ; after which three cheers were 
given for the Tribune) —has an aggregate circulation 
of 110,000; 20,000 more than all the newspapers of 
Virginia (applause). Virginia prints every year 
9,000,000 of copies of newspapers, all told. New York 
prints 115,000,000. The New York Tribune prints 
15,000,000— more than the whole State of Virginia put 
together. Such is the State of things counted in the 
gross, but I think the New York quality is as much 
better as the quantity is more (laughter). 

Virginia has 88,000 books in libraries not private 
New York 1,760,000; a little more than twenty times 
as much. Virginia exports $3,500,000; New York 
$53,000,000. Virginia imports $426,000; New York, 
#111,000,000. But in one article of export she is in 
advance of you— she sends to the man-markets of the 
South about $10,000,000 or $12,000,000 worth of her 



28 

children every year ; exports slaves ! The value of all 
the property real and personal in the State of Virginia, 
including slaves, is $430,701382; of New York $1,080,- 
000,000, without estimating the value of the men who 
own it. Virginia has got 472,528 slaves. I will esti- 
mate them at less than the market-value-at $400 each ; 
they come to [$189,000,000. I substract the value 
of the working people of Virginia and she is worth not 
quite 242,000,000. Now, the State of New York might 
buy up all the property of Virginia, including the 
slaves, and still have $049,000,000 left; might buy up 
all the real and personal property of Virginia, except 
the working-men, and have $838,000,000 left. The 
North appropriates the rivers, the mines, the harbours, 
the forests, fire and water-the South kidnaps men. 
Behold the cojnmercial result. 

Virginia is a great State-very great ! You don't 
know how great it is. I will read it to you presently. 
Things are great and small by comparison. I am 
quoting again from the Richmond Examiner (March 
24, 1854). " Virginia in this confederacy is the im- 
personation of the well-born, well-educated, well-bred 
aristocrat" \well-born, while the children oi Jefferson 
and the only children of Madison are a " connecting 
link between the human and brute creation "; well-edu- 
cated, with 21 per cent, of her white adults unable to 
read the vote they cast against the unalienable rights of 
man ; laell-hred, when her great product for exportation 
is-the children of her own loins ! Slavery is a " patri 
archal institution ;" the democratic Abrahams of Virgi- 
nia do not offer up their Isaacs to the Lord ; that would 
beasacr(/ice,theyonly.e//Mem. So] ; "she looks down 
from her elevated pedestal upon her 2^<^rvenue, igno- 



29 

rant, mendacious Yankee \illifiers, as coldly and calmly 
as a marble statue ; occasionally, she condescends to 
recognise the existence of her adversaries at the very 
moment when she crushes them. But she does it with- 
out anger, and with no more hatred of them than the 
gardener feels towards the insects which he finds it 
necessary occasionally to destroy." " She feels that she 
is the sword and buckler of the South — that it is her 
influence which has so frequently defeated and driven 
hack in dismay the Abolition party when flushed by 
temporary victory. Brave, calm and determined, wise 
in times of excitement, always true to the Slave Power-, 
never rash or indiscreet, the waves of Northern fana- 
ticism burst harmless at her feet ; the contempt for her 
Northern revilers is the result of her consciousness of 
her influence in the political world. She makes and 
unmakes Presidents ; she dictates her terms to the 
JVorthern Democracy and they obey her. She selects 
from among the faithful of the JVorth a man upon 
ichom she can rely, and she makes him President.'* 
[This latter is true ! The opinion of Richmond is of 
more might than the opinion of New York. Slavery, 
the political Gog on the outside, steers the ark of com- 
mercial Noah, and makes it rough or smooth weather 
inside, just as he likes.] 

" In the early days of the Republic, the superior sa- 
gacity of her statesmen enabled them to rivet so firmly 
the shackles of the slave, that the Abolitionists will 
never be able to unloose them.'' 

" A wide and impassible gulf separates the noble, 
proud, glorious Old Dominion from her Northern tra- 
ducers ; the mastiff dare not willingly assail the 
skunk ! " " When Virginia takes the field, she crushes 



30 

the whole Abolition party ; her slaughter is wholesale, 
and a hundred thousand Abolitionists are cut down 
when she issues her commands ! " 

Again (April 4th, 1854), " A hundred Southern gen- 
tlemen, armed with riding-whips, could chase an army 
of invading Abolitionists into the Atlantic." 

In reference to the project at the North of sending 
Northern Abolitionists along with the Northern Slave- 
breeders to Nebraska, to put freedom into the soil be- 
fore-Slavery gets there, the Examiner says : " Why, a 
hundred wild, lank, half-horse, half-alligator Mis- 
souri and Arkansas emigrayits would, if so disposed^ 
chase out of Nebraska and Kansas all the Abolition' 
ists who have figured for the last twenty years at Anti- 
Slavery meetings." 

I say Slavery is not profitable for the Nation nor for 
a State, but it is profitable for slave- owriers. You will 
see why. If the Northern capitalist owned the weavers 
and spinners at Lowell and Lawrence, New England 
would be poorer ; and the working-men would not be 
so well off, or so well-educated; but Undershot and 
Overshot, Turbine Brothers, Spindle & Co. would be 
richer and would get larger dividends. Land monopoly 
in England enfeebles the island, but enriches the aris- 
tocrac°y. How poor, ill-fed and ill-clad were the French 
peasants before the revolution ; how costly was the 
chateau of the noble. Monopoly was bad for the peo- 
ple; profitable for the rich men. How poor are the 
people in Italy ; how rich the Cardinals and the Pope. 
Oppression enriches the oppressor ; it makes poorer the 
down-trodden. Piracy is very costly to the merchant 
and to mankind ; but it enriches the pirate. Slavery 
impoverishes Virginia, but it enriches the master. It 



31 

gives him money — commercial power— office — political 
power. The slaveholder is drawn in his triumphal 
chariot by two chattels ; one, the poor black man, whom 
he " owns legally ; " the other, is the poor white man, 
whom he owns morally and harnesses to his chariot. 
Hence these American lords of the lash, cleave to this 
institution— they love it To the slaveholders, Slavery 
is money and power ! 

Now the South, weak in numbers, feeble in respect 
to money, has continually directed the politics of Ame- 
rica, just as she would. Her isjnorance and poverty 
were more efficacious than the northern riches and edu- 
cation. She is in earnest for Slavery ; the North not 
iyi earnest for freedom ! only earnest for money. So 
long as the Federal Government grinds the axes of the 
northern merchant, he cares little whether the stone is 
turned by the free man's labour or the slave's. Hence, 
the great centres of northern commerce and manufac- 
tures are also the great centres of pro-slavery poli- 
tics. Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Buffalo, Cin- 
cinnati, they all liked the Fugitive Slave bill ; all took 
pains to seize the fugitive who fled to a Northern altar 
for freedom ; nay, the most conspicuous clergymen in 
those cities became apostles of Kidnapping ; their 
churches were of Commerce, not Christianity. The 
North yielded to that last most insolent demand. 
Under the influence of that excitement she chose the 
present Administration, the present Congress. Now see 
the result ! Whig and Democrat meet on the same 
platform at Baltimore. It was the platform of Slavery, 
Both candidates gave in their allegiance to the same 
measure— Scott and Pierce— it was the measure which 
eompromised the first principles of the American Inde- 



32 

pendence— they were sworn on the Fugitive Slave bill. 
Whig and Democrat knew no " Higher Law," only the 
statute of slaveholders. Conscience bent down before 
the Constitution. What sort of a government can 
you expect from such conduct! What Represen- 
tatives! Just what you have got. Sow the wind, 
will you ? then reap the whirlwind. Mr. Pierce 
said in his Inaugural, " I believe that involuntary 
servitude is recognised by the Constitution " ; " that 
it stands like any other admitted right. I hold 
that the Compromise measures (i. e. the Fugitive Slave 
bill) are strictly constitutional and to be unhesitatingly 
carried into effect." The laws to secure the master's 
right to capture a man in the free States " should be 
respected and obeyed, not with a reluctance encou- 
raged by abstract opinions as to their propriety in a 
different state of Society, hut cheerfully and according 
to the decision of the tribunal to which their exposition 
belongs." These words were /us^orica^-reminiscences 
of the time when " no Higher Law" was the watch- 
word of the American State and the American Church; 
they were j^rophetic—ovamonQ of what we see to-day. 
I. Here is the Gadsden Treaty which has been nego- 
tiated How bad it is I cannot say ; only this. If 1 
am rightly informed, a tract of 39,000,000 acres, larger 
than all Virginia, is "re-annexed" to the slave soil 
Tvhich the "flag of our Union" already waves over. 
The whole thing, when it is fairly understood by the 
public, I think will be seen to be a more iniquitous 
matter than this Nebraska wickedness. 

11. Then comes the Nebraska bill, yet to be consum- 
mated. While we are -sitting here in cold debate, it 
may be the measure has passed. From the beginning 



83 

I have never had any doubts that it would pass ; if it 
could not be put through this session — as I thought it 
TTOuld — I felt sure that before this Congress goes out of 
office, Nebraska would be slave soil. You see what a 
majority there was in the Senate ; you see what a ma- 
jority there is in the House. I know there is an oppo- 
sition — and most brilliantly conducted, too, by the few 
faithful men ; but see this : The Administration has 
yet three years to run. There is an annual income of 
sixty millions of dollars. There are forty thousand 
offices to be disposed of—four thousand very valuable. 
And do you think that a Democratic Administration, 
with that amount of offices, of money and time, cannot 
buy up northern doughfaces enough to carry any mea- 
sure it pleases ? I know better. Once I thought that 
Texas could not be annexed. It was done. I learned 
wisdom from that. I have taken my counsel of my 
fears. I have not seen any barrier on which the North 
would rally that we have come to yet There are some 
things behind us. John Randolph said, years ago, "We 
will drive you from pillar to post, back, back, back." 
He has been as good as his word. We have been driven 
" back, back, back." But we cannot be driven much 
farther. There is a spot where we shall stop. I am 
afraid we have not come to it yet. I will say no more 
about it just now — because not many weeks ago I stood 
here and said a great deal. You have listened to me 
when I was feeble and hollow-voiced ; I will not tax 
your patience now, for in this, as in a celebrated feast 
of old, they have " kept the good wine until now ! " 
(alluding to Garrison and Phillips who were to follow). 
If the Nebraska bill is defeated, I shall rejoice that 



3^ 

Iniquity is foiled once more. But if it become a law — 
there are some things which seem probable. 

1. On the Fourth of March, 1856, the Democrats will 
have " leave to withdraw " from office. 

2. Every northern man who has taken a prominent 
stand in behalf of Slavery will be politically ruined. 
You know what befell the Northern Politicians who 
voted for the Missouri Compromise ; a similar fate hangs 
over the men who enslave Nebraska. Already, Mr. 
Everett is, theologically speaking, among the " lost ;" 
and of all the three thousand New England ministers 
whose petition he dared not present, not one will ever 
^3ray for his political salvation. 

Pause with me and drop a tear over the ruin of Ed- 
ward Everett, a man of large talents and commensurate 
industry, very learned, the most scholarly man, per- 
haps, in the country, with a persuasive beauty of 
speech only equalled by this American [Mr. Phillips], 
who surpasses him ; he has had a long career of public 
service, public honour— Clergyman, Professor, Editor, 
Hepresentative, Governor, Ambassador, President of 
Harvard College, alike the ornament as the Auxiliary 
of many a learned Society— he yet comes to such an 

end. 

" This is the state of man; to-day, he puts forth 
The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow, blossoms, 
And bears his blushing honours thick upon bim; 
The third day comes a frost, Nebraska s ivo^V, 
And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely, 
His greatness is a ripening, nips his root, 

And then he falls • 

" O howwretched 
Is that poor man that hangs on imhhc favours ! 
There is betwixt that smile he would aspire to, 
That sweet aspect o^ voters, and then- rum. 
More pangs and fears than wars or women have: 
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, 
Never to hope again ! " 



35 



Mr. Douglass also is finished ; the success of his 
measure is his own defeat. Mr. Piekce has three 
short years to serve ; then there will be one more Ex- 
President—ranking with Tyler and Fillmore. Mr. 
Seward need not agitate, 



■ " Let it work 



For 'tis the sport to have the enginer 
Hoise with his own petar." 

III. The next thing is the enslavement of Cuba. That 
is a very serious matter. It has been desired a long 
time. Lopez, a Spanish fiUibuster, undertook it and 
was legally put to death. I am not an advocate for the 
garrofe, but I think, all things taken into consideration, 
that he did not meet with a very inadequate mode of 
death, and I believe that is the general opinion, not only 
in Cuba, but in the United States. But Foung America 
is not content with that. Mr. Bean, a little while 
ago, in the House, proposed to repeal the neutrality 
laws— to set fiUibusterism on its legs again. You re- 
member the President's message about the •« Black 
Warrior "—how black warrior like it was ; and then 
comes the " unanimous resolution " of the Louisiana 
legislature asking the United States to interfere and 
declare war, in case Cuba should undertake to emanci- 
pate her slaves. Senator Slidell's speech is still ting- 
ling in our ears, asking the Government to repeal the 
neutrality laws and allow every pirate who pleases to 
land in Cuba and burn and destroy. You know Mr. 
SouWs conduct in Madrid. It is rumoured that he has 
been authorized to offer $250,000,000 for Cuba. The 
sum is enormous ; but when you consider the character 
of this Administration and the Inaugural of President 
Pierce, the unscrupulous abuse made of public money, 
I do not think it is a very extraordinary supposition. 



Butihis matter of gettiug possession of Cuba i& 
something dangerous as well as difficult. There arc 
three conceivable ways of getting it : one is by buying, 
and that I take it is wholly out of the question. If I 
am rightly informed, there is a certain Spanish debt 
owing to Englishmen, and that Cuba is somehow 
pledged as a sort of collateral security for the Spanish 
Bonds. I take it for granted that Cuba is not to be 
bought for many years without the interference of Eng- 
land, and depend upon it England will not allow it to be 
sold /or the establishment of Slavery : for I think it is 
pretty well understood by politicians that there is a 
regular agreement entered into between Spain on one 
side and England on the other, that at a certain period 
■within twenty-five years every slave in Cuba shall be 
set free (applause). I believe this is known to men 
somewhat versed in the secret history of the two Cabi- 
nets of England and of Spain. England has the same 
-wish for land which fires our Anglo-Saxon blood. She 
has Islands in the West Indies ; the Morro in Cuba is 
only 100 miles from Jamaica. If we get Cuba for 
Slavery, we shall next want the British West Indies for 
the same institution. Cuba filled with fiUibusters 
would be a dangerous neighbour. 

Then there are two other ways : one is by fiUibus- 
terism ; and that Mr. Slidell and Mr. Dean want to 
try ; the other is by open war. Now , fillibusterism will 
lead to open war, so I will consider only this issue. 

I know that Americans will fight more desperately, 
perhaps, on land or sea, than any other people. But 
fighting is an ugly business, especially with such anta- 
gonists as we shall have in this case. It is a matter 
well understood that the Captain- General of Cuba ha 



37 

a paper in his possession authorizing him discretionally 
la free the slaves and put arms in their hands when- 
ever it is thought necessary (applause). It is rather 
difiacult to get at the exact statistics of Cuba. There 
has been no census since 1842, 1 think, when the popu- 
lation was estimated at a million. I will reckon it now 
at 1,300,000-700,000 blacks, and 600,000 whites. Of 
the 700,000 blacks, half a million are slaves and two 
hundred thousand free men. Now, a black free man in 
Cuba is a very different person from the black free man 
in the United States. He has rights. He is not turned 
out of the omnibus nor the meeting house nor the grave- 
yard. He is respected by the law ; he respects himself, 
and is a formidable person ; let the blacks be furnished 
with arms, they are formidable foes. And remember 
there are mountain fastnesses in the centre of the is- 
land ; that it is as defensible as St. Domingo ; and it 
has a very unhealthy climate for Northern men. The 
Spaniard would have great allies. The vomito is there ; 
typhoid, dysentery, yellow fever, the worst of all, is 
there. A Northern army even of fillibusters would fight 
against the most dreadful odds. " The Lord from on 
high," as the old Hebrew would say, would fight against 
the Northern men ; the pestilence that swept off Sena- 
charib's host would not respect the fiUibuster. 

That is not all What sort of a navy has Spain? 
One hundred and seventy-nine ships of war ! They 
are small mostly, but they carry over 1,400 cannon, and 
24,000 men— 15,000 marines and 9,000 sailors. The 
United States has seventy -five skips of war ; 2,200 can- 
non, 14,000 men— large ships, heavy cannon. That is 
not all. Spaniards fight desperately. A Spanish armada 
I would not be very much afraid of ; but Spain will 



38 

issue letters of marque, and a Portuguese ©r Spanish 
pirate is rather an uncomfortable being to meet. Our 
commerce is spread all over the seas ; there is no mer- 
cantitle marine so unprotected as ours. Our ships do 
not carry muskets, still less cannon, since pirates have 
been swept off the sea. Let Spain issue letters of 
marque, England winking at it, and Algerine pirates 
from out the Barbary States of Africa, and other pirates 
from the Brazilian, Mexican and the West Indian ports, 
would prowl about the coast of the Mediterrenean and 
over all the bosom of the Atlantic ; and then where 
would be our commerce .' The South has nothing to fear 
from that. She has got no shipping Yes, Norfolk has 
23,000 tuns. The South is not afraid. The North has 
nearly four million tuns of shipping. But touch the 
commerce of a Northern man and you touch his heart. 
England has conceded to us as a Measure just what 
we asked. We have always declared " free ships make 
free goods." England said " Enemies' goods make ene- 
mies' ships." Now she has not af&rmed our Principle ; 
she has assented to our Measure. That is all you can 
expect her to do. But if we repeal our neutrality 
laws and seek to get Cuba in order to establish Slavery 
there, endangering the interests of England, and the 
freedom of her coloured citizens, depend upon it Eng- 
land will not suffer this to be done without herself in- 
terfering. If she is so deeply immersed in European 
wars that she cannot interfere directly, she will in- 
directly. But I have not thought that England and 
France are to be much engaged in a European war. 
I suppose the intention of the American Cabinet is to 
seize Cuba as soon as the British and Russians are 
fairly fi-hting, thinking that England will not inter- 



39 

fere. But in " this war of elder sons " which now 
goes on for the dismemberment of Turkey, it is not so 
clear that England will be so deeply engaged that she 
cannot attend to her domestic affairs, or the interest of 
her West Indies. I think these powers are going to 
divide Turkey between them, but I do not believe they 
are going to do much fighting there. If we are bent on 
seizing Cuba, a long and ruinous fight is a thing that 
ought to enter into men's calculations. Now, let such 
a naval warfare take place, and how will your insurance 
stock look in New York, Philadelphia and Boston ? 
How will your merchants look when reports come one 
after another that your ships are carried in as prizes 
by Spain or sunk on the ocean after they have been 
plundered ? I speak in the great commercial metropo- 
lis of America. I wish these things to be seriously 
considered by Northern men. Though I would not fear a 
naval war, let the Northern men look out for their own 
ships. But here is a matter which the South might 
think of. In case of foreign war, the North will 
not be the battle field. An invading army would at- 
tack the South. Who would defend it — the local militia, 
the " Chivalry " of South Carolina, the " gentlemen " of 
Virginia, who are to slaughter a 100,000 Abolitionists 
in a day ? Let an army set foot on Southern soil, with 
a few black Regiments ; let the commander offer /ree- 
dotn to all the Slaves atid put arms in their hands ; 
let him ask them to burn houses and butcher men ; and 
there would be a state of things not quite so pleasant 
for gentlemen of the South to look at. " They that 
laughed at the grovelling worm and trod on him may 
cry and howl when they see the stoop of the flying and 
fiery -mouthed dragon"! Now, there is only one opi- 



40 

nion about the valour of President Pierce. Like the 
sword of Hudibras it cut into itself, 



for lack 



Of other stuff to hew and hack." 
But would he like to stand with such a fire in his 
rear ; set a house on fire by hot shot, and you don't 
knoiv how much of it will burn down. 

IV. Well, if Nebraska is made a slave territory, as I 
suppose it will be, the next thing is the possession of 
Cuba. Then the war against Spain will come, as I think, 
inevitably. But even if we don't get Cuba, Slavery must 
be-extended to other parts of the Union. This may be 
Hquq judict '' by the Supreme Court — one of the 
powerful agents to destroy local self-government and 
legalize centralization ; or legislatively by Congress. 
Already Slavery is established in California. An at- 
tempt, you kuow, was made to establish it in Illinois. 
Senator Toombs, the other day, boasted to John P. 
Hale that it would " not be long before the slaveholder 
would sit down at the foot of Bunker Hill monument 
with his slaves." You and I may live to see it— at least 
to see the attempt made. A writer in a prominent 
Southern journal, the Charleston Courier (of March 
16, 1854), declares " that domestic Slavery is a consti- 
tutional institution and cannot be prohibited in a terri- 
tory by either Territorial or Congressional legislation. 
It is recognised by the Constitution as an existing and 
lawful Institution . . and by the recognition and 
establishment of Slavery eo nomine in the District of 
Columbia, under the constitutional provision for the 
acquisition of and exclusive legislation over such a 
capitoline district ; and by that clause also which de- 
clares that the citizens of each State shall be entitled 



41 

I i to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the 
-i several States." " The citizens of any State . . can- 
not be constitutionally denied the equal right . . of 
' sojourning or settling . , with their man servants 
and maid servants . . in any portion of the wide- 
spread Catiaan which the Lord their God hath given 
: them, there to dwell unmolested in person or pro- 
perty." Admirable exposition of the Constitution ! 
The free black man must be shut up in jail if he goes 
from Boston in a ship to Charleston, but the slaveholder 
may bring his slaves to Massachusetts and dwell there 
hir^unmolested with his property in men. South Caro- 
f"':^;. Una has a white population of 274,567 persons, consider- 
fi^Jably less than half the population of this city. But if 
; "South Carolina says to the State of New York, with 
V three million men in it, let us bring our slaves to New 
J;^ York, what will the " Hards " and the " Softs " and the 
1^** Silver Greys" answer? Gentlemen, we shall hear 
what we shall hear, I fear not an ofl&ceholder of any 
note would oppose the measure. It might be carried 
with the present Supreme Court, or Congress, I make 
no doubt. 

But this is not the end. After the Gadsden Treaty, 
the enslavement of Nebraska, the extension of Slavery 
to the free States, the seizure of Cuba, with other 
Islands— San Domingo, &c.— there is one step more— 
THE Re-Establishment of the African" Slave 
Trade. 

A recent number of the Southern Standard thus 
develops the thought : "With firmness and judgment 
we can open up the African slave emigration again to 
people the whole region of the tropics. We can boldly 
defend this upon the most enlarged system of philan- 



42 

thropy. It is far better for the wild races of Africa 
themselves." " The good old Las Casas, in 1519, was 
the first to advise Spain to import Africans to her colo- 
nies. . . Experience has shown his scheme was founded 
in wise and Christian philantrophy. . . The time is 
coming when we will boldly defend this emigration 
[kidnapping men in Africa and selling them in the 
Christian Republic] before the world. The hypocritical 
cant and whining morality of the latter-day saints will 
die away before the majesty of commerce. . . We have 
too long been governed by psalm-singing schoolmasters 
from the North . . The folly commenced in our own 
government uniting with Great Britain to declare 
slave-importing piracy." . . "A general rupture in 
Europe would force upon us the undisputed sway of the 
Gulf of Mexico and the West Indies , . With Cuba and 
St. Domingo, we could control the . . power of the 
world. Our true policy is to look to Brazil as the next 
great slave power . . A treaty of commerce and alli- 
ance with Brazil will give us the control over the Gulf 
of Mexico and its border countries, together with the 
islands ; and the consequence of this will place African 
Slavery beyond the reach of fanaticism at home or 
abroad. These two great slave powers . ; ought to 
guard and strengthen their mutual interests . . We 
can not only preserve domestic servitude, but we can 
defy the power of the world." . . " The time will come 
that all the islands and regions suited to African 
Slavery, between us and Brazil, will fall under the 
control of these two powers . . In a few years there 
will be no investment for the ;:?200,000,000 . . so pro- 
fitable . . as the development . . of the tropical re- 
gions " [that is as the African slave trade]. . . " If the 



43 

slaveholding race in these States are but true to them- 
selves, they have a great destiny before them." 
Now, gentlemen and ladies, who is to blame that things 
have come to such a pass as this ? The South and the 
North, but the North much more than the South, very 
much more. Gentlemen, we let Gog get upon the Ark ; 
we took pay for his passage. Our most prominent men 
in Church and State have sworn allegiance to Gog. But 
this is not always to last; there is a day after to-day — 
a Forever behind each to-day. 

The North ought to have fought Slavery at the adop- 
tion of the Constitution, and at every step since ; after 
the battle was lost then, we should have resisted each 
successive step of the Slave Power. But we have yielded 
— yielded continually. We made no fight over the annex- 
ation of slave territory, the admission of slave States. 
We should have rent the Union into the primidve town- 
ships sooner than consent to the Fugitive Slave bill. 
But as we failed to fight manfully then, I never thought 
the North would rally on the Missouri Compromise 
line. I rejoice at the display of indignation I witness 
here and elsewhere. For once New York appears more 
moral than Boston. I thank you for it. A meeting is 
called in the Park to-morrow. It is high time. But 
I doubt that the North will yet rally and defend the 
line drawn in 1820. But there are two lines of defence 
where the Nation will pause, I think — the occupation 
of Cuba, with its war so destructive to Northern ships; 
and the restoration of the African slave trade. The 
slave-breeding States, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, 
Tennessee, Missouri, will oppose that ; for if the Gulf 
States and the future tropical territories can import 
Africans at $100 a head, depend upon it, that will spoil 



44 

the market for the slave-breeders of America. And, 
gentlemen, if Virginia cannot sell her own children, 
how will this *' well-born, well-educated, well-bred 
aristocrat" look down on the poor and ignorant 
Yankee ! No, gentlemen, this iniquity is not to last 
forever. A certain amount of force will compress a 
cubic foot of water into nine-tenths of its natural size ; 
but the weight of the whole earth cannot make it any 
smaller. Even the North is not infinitely compressible. 
When atom touches atom, you may take off the screws. 

Things cannot continue long in this condition. Every 
triumph of Slavery is a day's march towards its ruin. 
There is no Higher Law, is there ? " He taketh the wise 
in their own craftiness, the council of the wicked is 
carried" — aye, but it is carried headlong. 

Only see what a change has coming over our spirit 
just now. Three years ago, Isaiah Rynders and Hiram 
Ketchum domineered over New York; andthose gen- 
tlemen who are to follow me, and whom you are impa- 
tient to hear, were mobbed down in the city of New 
York, two years ago ; they could not find a hall that 
would be leased to them for money or love, and had 
to adjourn to Syracuse to hold their convention. Look 
at this assembly now (applause). 

A little while ago all the leading clergymen were in 
favour of the fugitive slave bill ; now three thousand 
of New England ministers remonstrate against Ne- 
braska. They know there is a fire in their rear, and, 
in theological language, it is a fire that " is not quench- 
ed." It goeth not out by day and there is no night 
there. The clergymen stand between eternal torment 
on one side and the little giant of Slavery on the other. 
They do not go back! Two thousand English clergy- 



45 

men once ♦became non-conformists in a single day* 
Three thousand New England ministers remonstrated 
against the enslavement of Nebraska. Now is the time 
to push and be active, call meetings, bring out men of all 
parties, all forms of religion, agitate, agitate, agitate. 
Make a fire in the rear of the Government and the repre- 
sentatives. The South is weak— only united. The North 
is strong in money, in men, in education, in the jus- 
tice of our great cause—only not united for freedom. 
Only be faithful to ourselves and Slavery will come 
down, not slowly, as I thought once, but when the peo- 
ple of the North say it, it will come down with a great 
CRASH (great applause). 

Then when we are free from this plague-spot of 
Slavery — the curse to our industry, our education, our 
politics, and our religion — we shall increase more rap- 
idly in number and still more abundantly be rich. The 
South will be as the North — active, intelligent— Vir- 
ginia rich as New York, the Carolinas as active as 
Massachusetts. Then, by peaceful purchase, the Anglo- 
Saxon may acquire the rest of this North American 
Continent. The Spaniards will make nothing of it. 
Nay, we may honourably go further South, and pos- 
sess the Atlantic and Pacific slopes of the Northern con- 
tinent, extending the area of Freedom at every step. 
We may carry thither the Anglo Saxon vigour and en- 
terprise, the old love of liberty, the love also of law . 
the best institutions of the present age— ecclesiastical,' 
political, social, domestic. Then what a nation we 
shall one day become. America, the mother of a thou- 
sand Anglo-Saxon States, tropic and temperate, on both 
sides the Equator, may behold the Mississippi and the 
Amazon uniting their waters, the drainage of two vast 



46 

continents in the Mediterranean of the Western World ; 
may count her children at last by hundreds of millions 
— and among them all behold no tyrant and no slave ! 
What a spectacle — the Anglo-Saxon Family occupying 
a whole hemisphere, with industry, freedom, religion. 
The fulfilment of this vision is our province ; we are the 
involuntary instruments of God. Shall America scorn 
the mission Godsends her on ? Then let us all perish, 
and may Russia teach justice to mankind ! 



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